EASTON, Mass. (June 3, 2014) – Stonehill College's NCAA Division II National Championship women's lacrosse team has been named a member of the Northeast-10 Conference Hall of Fame Class of 2014. The announcement was made last night during the NE-10's annual awards banquet as part of the league's end of the year meetings being held at Essex Resort & Spa in Essex, Vermont.

Stonehill's 2003 women's lacrosse team captured the College's first NCAA Division II national championship when it posted a 9-8 victory over Longwood (Va.) University to cap a 17-2 season, which included a perfect 9-0 mark in Northeast-10 play. The team quickly put a pair of season-opening losses in the rear view mirror on its way to a fifth-straight Northeast-10 regular season championship before rolling to an 18-2 triumph over Bryant University for its fourth-straight NE-10 Tournament title.

"Congratulations to the 2003 Women's Lacrosse team for their induction into the NE-10 Hall of Fame," said Brendan J. Sullivan, Director of Intercollegiate Athletics at the College. "2003 was a magical season which we continue to remember with great pride and admiration for your accomplishments. This honor is another deserving accolade for a great collection of student-athletes and coaches." The team will be formally recognized during a women's lacrosse game during the upcoming 2015 season.

Senior Katie (Lambert) Conover, '03, currently head coach of the women's lacrosse program at Stonehill, earned Northeast-10 Player of the Year honors for the third-straight year to headline a lists of nine All-Conference selections for the team in 2003. Michael Daly, currently the head coach at Merrimack College, was named the NE-10 Coach of the Year, while Erin Acone, '06, was named the Conference's Freshman of the Year. Five members of the team earned All-America honors from the Intercollegiate Women's Lacrosse Coaches Association (IWLCA), including Conover, who became the first student-athlete in program history to collect first team All-America honors all four years. She was joined on the first team by Acone and Carissa Medeiros, '03, who now serves as head women's lacrosse coach at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Stonehill was named host of the 2003 NCAA Division II Championships and used that home field advantage to notch a pair of one goal victories to claim the national championship. Stonehill defeated LIU-Post (14-13) behind six goals from Acone in the semifinal round before All-American Colby Confer, '05, scored the deciding goal with just 11-seconds remaining to lift Stonehill past Longwood in the final. The 2003 team was inducted into the Stonehill Athletics Hall of Fame in 2011, which also includes Conover (inducted in 2008), Acone (2013) and Lauren Stone, '06 (2010). Ginny McCauley, '00, an assistant coach in 2003, is also a member of the Stonehill Athletics Hall of Fame (2006).

With 20 intercollegiate sports, Stonehill boasts one of the top athletic and academic programs in the country. The Skyhawks have finished in the top three in the final NE-10 Presidents' Cup standings ten straight years, winning the Cup four times, including a streak of three-straight from 2009-10 through 2011-12. This prestigious award is given to the top performing athletic school in the Northeast-10, across all sports and seasons. Stonehill has received the NCAA Division II Presidents' Award for Academic Achievement each of the first three years of the program's existence of honoring programs with an Academic Success Rate (ASR) of 90-percent or better. The Skyhawks have earned a 97% Academic Success Ranking (ASR) by the NCAA, which considers the academic success rate of the institution based on the graduation rate of student-athletes, good for fifth among all NCAA Division II institutions, with ten Skyhawk teams receiving a perfect rating of 100%. In addition, the Skyhawks are ranked sixth in the National Collegiate Scouting Association (NCSA) Power Rankings used to assess the academic and athletic standards of all NCAA and NAIA athletic programs.